Quotes by David Grubbs - Page 1

There's part of me that is a strict materialist.
David Grubbs / Singer
Copy Quote
The word 'archive' seems so reassuring, but I have a lot ofconcern over the longevity of documentary materials.
David Grubbs / Singer
Longevity
Reassuring
Copy Quote
For me, it's good to have those dissimilar modes of songwriting sit side-by-side on a record, because they yield such different results.
David Grubbs / Singer
Different
Records
Yield
Copy Quote
Records have always been the most extraordinary form of time travel for me, and that's why it matters to know when something was circulated, and if it had an audience of five or 50,000.
David Grubbs / Singer
Audience
Extraordinary
Time Travel
Copy Quote
I don't write poetry for the page because my inclination in that area is satisfied by songwriting. "Ornamental Hermit" was a comparatively effortless song to write, which is rare for me.
David Grubbs / Singer
Pages
Song
Writing
Copy Quote
The word "archive" seems so reassuring, but I'm not sure about these things that are now being called archives. Is anything lost by the fact that the word has come to mean so many more things.
David Grubbs / Singer
Mean
Not Sure
Reassuring
Copy Quote
As there are more online archives of improvised music, it becomes more like the daily practice of playing it. It lessens the idea of there being masterpieces of improvised music through benchmark recordings.
David Grubbs / Singer
Masterpiece
Online
Copy Quote
What a strange thing - that musicians grant permission to places like Ubuweb, and then because it's free, it'll probably be listened to more often than something that is still wrestling with this idea of making a profit.
David Grubbs / Singer
Musician
Strange
Wrestling
Copy Quote
I recall improvisational drummer and composer Michael Evans telling me a story of someone who had the opportunity to meet Cage and give him a record, and John Cage just smiled and said, "You know I have nothing to play this on?"
David Grubbs / Singer
Opportunity
Giving
Just Smile
Copy Quote
In eighteenth-century England, there was a practice of hiring a picturesque hermit who would inhabit the beautiful ruin on your estate. To me it rhymes with certain kinds of pop-music entertainers and eccentrics - both touted and tolerated.
David Grubbs / Singer
Beautiful
Practice
Ruins
Copy Quote
The instrumental pieces are compositions, certainly, although that's not the language that I instinctively use. They're not scored, and arrangements are often arrived at collaboratively. I always choose to play with people whose input I desire.
David Grubbs / Singer
Desire
People
Play
Copy Quote
When I read John Cage's book Silence, I was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. For me, records were a mode of time travel and geographic travel, interfacing with a much larger world. So it seemed antiquated and backwards that Cage would be so down on them.
David Grubbs / Singer
Book
Growing Up
Silence
Copy Quote
If the records that I make have one thing in common, it's that there is little recapitulation, and the idea is that it should end in a place very different from where it began, and that you've heard musicians undergo a change or be irreversibly transformed.
David Grubbs / Singer
Ideas
Littles
Records
Copy Quote
My experience that undergirds that observation comes from punk, where people might have scraped together the money to be in the studio for an afternoon to make a record. Punk isn't a music that you think of as chance-based, but exigency has a lot to do with it.
David Grubbs / Singer
People
Thinking
Together
Copy Quote
The danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of getting stuck doing the music. When I make an album, I write music, I write lyrics, I come up with the visual design, etc. I get to do all of that stuff.
David Grubbs / Singer
Discipline
Division Of Labor
Writing
Copy Quote
Kenny Goldsmith from Ubuweb describes himself as an amateur archivist, and people can download files from Ubuweb - it's not a streaming service. But it's a miracle that it's still online and they're able to make it work through the donations of server space and volunteer efforts.
David Grubbs / Singer
Effort
People
Volunteer
Copy Quote
There's a book of interviews with John Cage by Joan Retallack called Musicage that was finished the summer that he died, in 1992. And in one of the last interviews, he was very excited to talk about nanotechnology. There's real technophilia from him, a kind of utopian embrace of the idea that nanotechnology will free people up to do what they really want to do.
David Grubbs / Singer
Book
Real
Summer
Copy Quote
The question of art songs always came up with Gastr del Sol. I think Jim O'Rourke had it right in being clear that there's a tradition of art song - Ives being the touchstone for the two of us - and what we do doesn't belong to it. It wasn't important to advance those kinds of distinctions, but clearly he thought it was fanciful for anyone to speak of what we were doing as being in that tradition.
David Grubbs / Singer
Art
Song
Thinking
Copy Quote
Otherwise the history just gets completely flattened out, and people imagine that everything was always available and accessible. One of the things that struck me was the way in which the landscape of experimental music seemed different at different points in time, on the basis of where one was situated geographically, if one had access to live performances, and what was released at a particular time.
David Grubbs / Singer
Different
Imagine
People
Copy Quote
I found myself thinking about the distance between the 60s and today through certain moments. Like the Henry Flynt interview with Ubuweb founder Kenny Goldsmith, where he talks about how he was scarred by how proud John Cage was to be ignorant of popular music. Goldsmith says, "Nobody thinks twice nowadays about listening to everything!" Something that had seemed so uniquely, radically syncretistic in Flynt's day seems much more commonplace now.
David Grubbs / Singer
Distance
Ignorant
Thinking
Copy Quote
Chance in music doesn't have to involve the I Ching or rolling dice or throwing yarrow stalks. It can involve an out-of-tune guitar, or other impossible-to-replicate moments of awkwardness - even more so than an awkward, out-of-tune live performance, because there's something incredible about the way that an out-of-tune guitar becomes part of the song on a record. I won't be precious and say it's part of the composition - that's nonsensica l - but chance occurrences are so crucial to what's distinctive. It's the fingerprints all over so many of these recordings.
David Grubbs / Singer
Chance
Awkward
Song
Copy Quote

Related Singer Authors

Zazie
Singer
Saturday, Apr 18, 1964
Yuya Matsushita
Singer
Thursday, May 24, 1990
Yunho
Singer
Thursday, Feb 06, 1986
Youssou N'dour
Singer
Thursday, Oct 01, 1959
Youngjae
Singer
Monday, Jan 24, 1994
Young Mc
Singer
Wednesday, May 10, 1967
Yoseob
Singer
Friday, Jan 05, 1990
Yoon Mi-Rae
Singer
Sunday, May 31, 1981
Yolanda Adams
Singer
Sunday, Aug 27, 1961
Yesung
Singer
Friday, Aug 24, 1984
Yara
Singer
Wednesday, Jun 01, 1983
Yannis Philippakis
Singer
Wednesday, Apr 23, 1986
Yang Hyun-Suk
Singer
Tuesday, Dec 02, 1969
Wynonna Judd
Singer
Saturday, May 30, 1964
Willow Smith
Singer
Tuesday, Oct 31, 2000

View All Singer Quotes

Top Authors

Kobe Bryant
Basketball Player
Wednesday, Aug 23, 1978
Muhammad Ali
Professional Boxer
Saturday, Jan 17, 1942
Friday, Jun 03, 2016
Dalai Lama
Saturday, Jul 06, 1935
Maya Angelou
Author
Wednesday, Apr 04, 1928
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
John Lewis
U.s. Representative
Wednesday, Feb 21, 1940
Les Brown
Author
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
Chanakya
Teacher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Robert Frost
Poet
Thursday, Mar 26, 1874
Tuesday, Jan 29, 1963
George Carlin
Comedian
Wednesday, May 12, 1937
Sunday, Jun 22, 2008
John C. Maxwell
Author
Thursday, Feb 20, 1947
Saint Augustine
Saint
Saturday, Nov 13, 0354
Wednesday, Aug 28, 0430
Edgar Allan Poe
Author
Thursday, Jan 19, 1809
Sunday, Oct 07, 1849
George Bernard Shaw
Playwright
Saturday, Jul 26, 1856
Thursday, Nov 02, 1950
Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Kanye West
Songwriter
Wednesday, Jun 08, 1977
Thursday, Jun 04, 2015

View All Authors

David Grubbs Quotes - Page 1

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Singer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Singer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page